Breeding of the Goldie’s Lorikeet. PART II

Breeding

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Read also the first part of this article:

Breeding of the Goldie’s Lorikeet. PART I

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Diet

Feeding of lories is such never ending story. Aviculturists have discussed this issue for decades and there are hundreds of homemade receipts and commercial nectars. Everybody is confident that his or her way of feeding is the best, of course. After eight years of keeping of lories I can’t say that my current receipt would meet the expectations. Nutritional requirements of nectarivorous birds is a very complex issue which may cover a whole book. Therefore I’m not going to discuss all the aspects. However, there is one thing I would like to highlight – lories and lorikeets is not an uniform group in terms of diet.

Loriinae family counts approximately sixty species of parrots. When we consider that the whole Psittaciformes order includes over 350 species then every sixth parrot is a lory or lorikeet. I believe that an important issue of today’s loribreeding is the fact that we feed all lories the same way. Most of breeders think – they are nectarivorous so they need nectar, that’s it that’s all.

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I agree that nectarivory is a unique characteristic but, would you feed the hummingbird and the Rainbow Lorikeet the same way? I doubt it. Some lory and lorikeet species can differ a lot and I believe that diet of e.g. Arfak Lorikeet (Oreopsittacus arfaki) and Rainbow lorikeet (Trichoglossus haematodus) just can’t be the same. Most of parrots are granivorous animals and we also don’t feed them with the same diet. Feeding of a budgie and an amazon parrot or macaw is very different but still both are seed eaters.

Anyway, this is an article about Goldie’s Lorikeet and therefore I will focus on it. This species is included in genus Trichoglossus which is, in my opinion, not so dependent of nectar as other genera like Charmosyna, Oreopsittacus or Vini. I believe that the degree of nectarivory can be assessed on the basis of the beak shape which is relatively robust in Godie’s. This could mean that lories are adapted to feed on more food source types, not just nectar. Exact information about natural nutritional requirements of this species is unknown. In literature, we mostly find that they feed on seeds, nectar, fruits and insects.

In my facility, Goldiei’s are fed once a day. If temperature increases over 25°C then it can get spoil and therefore it’s good to feed twice a day.

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I feed my lories with a nectar of following composition:

1kg of mixture consists of:

550g oat flour

375 sugar mix (glucose [5], fructose [4], sacharose [1])

75g brewer yeast

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To get 1,5 liters of wet nectar I mix 100g of this mixture together with 100g fruits and veggies (at least 6 kinds of fruits and veggies each feeding). I give 250ml of this nectar per one pair of Goldie’s per day.

Besides that, birds get also sprouted seeds, pulses, insects and eggfood (Orlux Patée, Versele Laga) in the second bowl. I call this „protein cocktail“ and I also believe that this part should be species specific as individual genera differ mostly in protein level requirements. I have observed that some species consume some proteins only during the breeding season and they don’t touch it for the rest of the year.

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(c) Lubomir Tomiska

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Breeding

Goldie’s Lorikeet is being considered to be one of the easiest species to breed and it’s often recommended to begginers. However, in my case it wasn’t so easy to reach the first success. Honestly, this species wasn’t my most favorite at all and it became a part of my collection accidentally. When I visited one German breeder he had a single female for sale, she was two years old. The breeder was finishing his breeding of lories and needed to sell it quickly.

The female was in good condition, cheap and therefore I didn’t hesitate. The bird was hand reared and tamed, whenever I came in front of the cage and open the door she immediatelly came to me to say hello. A few months passed when one Czech breeder called me and asked me if I want his breeding male – 10 years old. I didn’t know about anything else so I took it.

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(c) Iggino van Bael

(c) Iggino van Bael

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Later, it turned out that this bird is very sensitive to any kind of stress. In parrots, it sometimes happens that when stressed their pupils become contracted and the whole body get „frozen“. However, in this case the male was having a fit. It looked like epileptic seizure. Otherwise, it was in good condition so I put it together with the female.

Both have shared a cage of size 1 x 1 x 1m for 9 months but for the whole time didn’t show an interest in reproduction. At that time I was thinking that the old epileptic is probably not a right partner for my beautiful female. Accidentally, I visited another breeder a few days after that and he had a spare male available. However, this one was 13 years old and had a skin head. He offered me this bird as a breeding loan. I was thinking if I really want to have two retirees at home, one with naked head another epileptic but then I said why not. I will put them all together to one aviary and we will see.

Finally, it has been shown that the skin head is probably more lucrative partner than the epileptic as a few days later I observed the first copulation. I removed the second male and put a nest box into the cage immediatelly. Unfortunatelly, birds didn’t show any interest in any of the nest boxes I offered to them. Why didn’t I just buy four young birds at the beginning? At this time young birds would be already two years old and could breed. Instead of that I have old birds with no future.

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(c) Iggino van Bael

(c) Iggino van Bael

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The spare male was also occupying a cage which I needed for other birds so I put it back to the cage together with the pair. You wouldn’t believe it, the female started mating with him! A few weeks later, I found my first eggs from Goldie’s in the nest, finally! The first clutch was infertile and later broken but in the next one one fertile egg was laid. The female incubated very well and after 23 days the chick hatched.

Unfortunately, the second day I open the nest box and the chick was disappeared. Parents ate it. I keep a pair of Red-flanked Lorikeets in the next cage which was nesting at the same time and therefore I suspect they disturbed the Goldie’s. A few weeks after that, I sold a pair of lories in another facility and put Goldie’s there instead. To prevent egg breakage I used „L“ shaped nest. At the beginning of the next summer, a pairs started nesting again. Two eggs were laid, one of them was fertile. At this time, both parents fed it very well until independence.

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author: Lubomir Tomiska

Title photo: (c) Lubomir Tomiska

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